BIOGRAPHY
I was born in Tampa and later relocated to Zephyrhills where I was raised. I graduated Magna Cum Laude from Zephyrhills High School in 2004 and was deemed Most Artistic Senior for my abilities in visual arts. A year later, I obtained my Associate of Arts degree from Pasco-Hernando Community College. I returned to Tampa in 2005 to enroll at Hillsborough Community College and the University of South Florida shortly thereafter. After I graduate this semester, I plan to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree and ideally a doctorates degree in Visual Culture/Art Theory.
WORK SUMMARY
My artistic experience has been propelled by my insatiable desire to question and explore. Through university-level art course enrollment, local and national exhibitions, and press publications, I have discovered the realm of art to be best suited for my endeavors. Artists that I admire – such as Ann Hamilton, Felix Gonzales-Torres, and Paul Pfeiffer – have had an influential impact on my work. My developing portfolio is inclusive of three-dimensional, digital, and ephemeral artwork that examines social happenings in juxtaposition to personal and collective experiences. These works inhabit a conceptual realm where my expression of edgy content acts as an exploitation of topical, political, and global happenings. Through my work, I seek to better understand myself in relation to the world around me. Ultimately, I hope my works engage the public and invite them on a similar journey.
STATEMENT
My work explores the elusive properties that are inherent to art, memory, and experience. It is my intention to investigate the constructive qualities of elusion and explore the gaps in perception, interpretation, and understanding. Often through interactive works, I invite the viewers to contemplate elusion in their engagement with the artworks - and by extension, their engagement with life. Because the works are based on interaction, the viewers cannot address the works without addressing themselves.
Often, I utilize a reductive aesthetic in my work that in some regards reminds me of early paintings by Mondrian. One gets a sense that he tried to explore the chaos of visual representation while simultaneously attempting to control it. Similarly, I also aim to control my media and bring a sense of containment to the complex subject at hand. Interestingly, my work often contains dual properties of implosion and explosion as a result; through my reductive methodology, the work explodes through references and relationships outward again.
My aesthetic decisions for my works and the installation environment stem from Aristotle's philosophy on art: